Lucy’s Deja Vue – New Age Nearly Jewish Deli Rye

A year ago, I found some smoked pastrami hanging out in the freezer so Lucy came up with a modern twist for an old classic, Jewish Deli Rye, to compliment the smoked meat in a slightly non traditional style of bread.

 

This week I found so smoke brisket in the very same freezer so Lucy, true to her nature, came up with another slightly non-traditional JDR that is much closer to the traditional one than last year.  Dan Baggs really let us have it trying pass that one off as a Jewish Deli Rye when he grew up in New York Surrounded by the real thing.

So, this time we are calling it New Age Nearly Jewish Deli Rye hoping Don Baggs doesn’t put a Dough Contract out on us with his Miami Bread Baking Mob – The MBBM!  This one really is pretty close to the real thing -n a new age way.

First off JDR breads have a higher amount of pre-fermented flour in the levain so we doubled it to 20% about twice our usual for this time of year when it’s 104 F outside.  But, Lucy bought some rolled oats to make a porridge, or gruel, bread as she likes to call it and that meant 50g of ground rolled oats ended up in the levain – 10% or half the flour in the levin mix.

It also had 5% high gluten flour and 5% rye bran in the 100% hydration 3 stage levain as well.  Now Jewish Deli rye doesn’t have oats in it but Lucy could care less about these technical things or anything for that matter – pretty much just like me.

The dough had 25% high extraction rye, the left over from the bran sifting, making for a bread that has 30% total whole grain rye – very much the JDR standard amount.  The rest of the dough flour was had 55% high gluten flour making for 60% HGF overall.

It pays to have a good breakfast on bake day!

With so much rye and oat in the mix, high gluten seemed like a reasonable remainder even though it too isn’t really a JDR flour.  We chucked in 2% Pink Himalayan sea salt and enough water to bring it up to 71% hydration – pretty low for one of Lucy’s fake JDR breads.  She had planned ahead for once though.

We love noodles for lunch. Especially with an apple galette chaser

She planned on adding a soaker of 5% dehydrated onions and 3% caraway seeds to the mix on the first set pf stretch and folds and that would bring some extra liquid, at least 5% to the overall hydration.  Both of these add ins are traditional for a JDR bread so she was back to being normal.

It was still 90 F when I sliced into it.  Was a little dense toward the bottom.

Once everything except the add ins were brought together we did 100 slap and folds to get it all mixed and the gluten working.  30 minutes later we did 10 slap and folds and 10 minutes later we did the first of 3 stretch and folds to get the onions and caraway evenly distributed.  All the stretch and folds were on 30 minute intervals.

After the last set of S&F’s we let the dough rest for 10 minutes before shaping it into a tight batard and plopping it into a very large, rice floured, batard basket that was way too big for this bread.  We immediately bagged it and placed it into the fridge for a 12 hour retard.

Some BBQ sauce poking through this sandwixh.

The next morning we noticed that the batard didn’t do too much in the fridge overnight so we let it worm up and finish proofing on the counter for 2.5 hours before firing up the oven to 450 F with the Mega Steam Lava Pan under the bottom stone.

We unmolded the batard onto parchment on a peel, brushed it with water, a very traditional thing indeed, sliced it twice lengthwise, a non-traditional score, and slid it onto the bottom stone.  Right before the oven door was closed we put 2 cups of water on the lava rocks for 18 minutes of Mega Steam. 

A free loaf of Sourdough my wife got at the Farmers Market that she received in gratitude for donating to the baker's emergency oven fund to replace his oven that went Kaput a few weeks before.  Remember the 3 G's of character attributes so hard to master for success in all things - graciousness, gratitude and generosity.

Killer Red Pork Enchiladas for Cinco De Mayo.

Once the steam came out we lowered the oven to 425 F, convection this time, and baked it for another 12 minutes until it reached 205 F on the inside.  It sprang bloomed and browned nicely.  The smell was outrageous.  We brushed it with water again as it came out of the oven.

A slice of that apple gallete.

We will wait for our lunch brisket sandwich to see what the crumb looks like – can’t wait.  This bread is just plain delicious.  The caraway and onion really come through.  The crust is crispy but the crumb issoft and moist.  This bread is what JRB bread is all about.

Lucy says to have that salad every night with dinner

and that Apple Galette!